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277 points cebert | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.326s | source
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PostOnce ◴[] No.44361768[source]
Theoretically, credit should be used for one thing: to make more money. (not less)

However, instead of using it to buy or construct a machine to triple what you can produce in an hour, the average person is using it to delay having to work that hour at all, in exchange for having to work an hour and six minutes sometime later.

At some point, you run out of hours available and the house of cards collapses.

i.e., credit can buy time in the nearly literal sense, you can do an hour's work in half an hour because the money facilitates it, meaning you can now make more money. If instead of investing in work you're spending on play, then you end up with a time deficit.

or, e.g. you can buy 3 franchises in 3 months instead of 3 years (i.e. income from the 1 franchise), trading credit for time to make more money, instead of burning it. It'd have been nice had they taught me this in school.

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1. ta1243 ◴[] No.44365679[source]
When I was in my 20s it would take me 20 hours work to earn 100 units

15 years later it takes 3 hours work to earn the same amount

If I borrow 100 units in my 20s at 4%, it cost 4 units per year

I save 20 hours work, and it costs me 4 units a year. That's 48 minutes work in year one, reducing to 8 minute after 15 years. Overall it costs an average 20 minutes a year for 15 years, or 5 hours of work, then I repay the capital which is 3 hours.

I've spent 8 hours of work rather than 20 hours.